Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Who Are Your Egyptians?

A
small group of us were sitting in a room, assembled to discuss a communications
project. The organization had been dealing with explosive growth, a new finance
campaign was starting, and we had been asked to consider how to communicate the
new effort.

A
senior executive led the group, and it was increasingly clear he was growing impatient
with what he considered was the slow pace of the discussion. It was also clear
he wasn’t thrilled having to deal with communications people, which he wasn’t
one of.

I raised
the question that turned out to be the tripwire. “We need to understand why the
growth is happening. We simply don’t know. We should ask people what is going
on, because it could be temporary, it could be permanent, it could be something
else altogether.”

The
executive had had enough. “I’m not here to ask people questions,” he snapped. “I’m
here to get this campaign going.” We were supposed to be discussing articles
and speeches and talking points, he said, not trying to find out why there was
growth. He was running a campaign, not a research operation.

It
was something of a rant, and when he finished, a noticeable chill had settled
over the room. The meeting ended shortly thereafter, and the executive did not
call us to meet again.

Would
it make any difference if I said the organization was a church, the finance
campaign was to raise money for a new church building complex, and the
executive was a pastor?

The
church had been dealing with the problem of explosive growth, and it was a
problem. We had recently moved into a new building, and it was already
insufficient. The parking lot has been been expanded two or three times, and it
was still difficult to find a space on Sunday. The children’s ministry was
getting overwhelmed. The facility lacked space for all of the youth programs
and adult classes.

Instead
of asking people why they were coming, the leadership was assuming growth would
continue forever. And the church was turning to campaign programs, fundraising
visits, sermons from the pulpit, and outside consultants who had all the right
tactics for raising the most amount of money in the shortest possible time.

No
one was asking people why people were coming. And no one was looking at the
fact that attendance did not necessarily translate into membership, or at the
fact that attendance might be “churning” – with a high “turnover rate” of who
was making attendance permanent. That’s where the communications group was, and
we were dismissed and not called together again.

In
the face of a huge problem, as “good” of a problem as it might have been, the church
leadership turned to the Egyptians.

InThe
Fire of Delayed Answers,Bob Sorge describes what King
Hezekiah did when he faced the most ferocious and rapacious army of his time –
the Assyrians. They had just conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, and they
were not known for being merciful to their foe. Hezekiah, who knew better,
turned to the familiar and the human – and made an alliance with the Egyptians.
He didn’t turn to God, and he almost lost everything. The Egyptians turned out
not to be much help, and Hezekiah found himself and Jerusalem surrounded. When
it was almost too late, Hezekiah turned to God for help, and it was God who
destroyed the Assyrian army, right at gates of the city.

Sorge’s point is that, when facing serious problems
(our
own version of the Assyrians), too often we turn to human agencies, human
strengths and human resources, and we leave God out of the equation. We can do
that individually, and we can do that collectively – like a church. Things make
work, and we may succeed for a time, but ultimately it leads to more problems
or, worse, to disaster.

Led
by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Fire of Delayed
Answers. To see more posts on this chapter, “The Assyrians Are Coming,” please
visit Sarah at Living Between the
Lines.

I was a little shocked that your meeting turned out to be a church meeting, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. We can all be driven and focused to the point that we fail to recognize what's happening around us. Pressure brings out the best or the worst in us. I'm certainly no exception to that. I'm guilty of looking the wrong places for help when God is trying to get me to wait. Thanks Glynn.

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Professional writer exploring faith and culture, life and work; happily married to Janet, the love of my life; father of two grown sons. Award-winning speechwriter and communication consultant. I am an editor for TweetSpeak Poetry and the author of the novels "Dancing Priest," "A Light Shining," and "Dancing King," and the non-fiction book "Poetry at Work."